Employers renew push for 1½-hour casual shifts

Thousands of small businesses across Australia could benefit from a retail employers’ push to win shorter minimum hours for student casuals.

It is the third time the National Retail Association has approached Fair Work Australia in a bid to cut the minimum three-hour shift for casual retail workers.

Employers are more confident this time after narrowing their application to student casuals who work after school, on weekdays.

The association has applied for a minimum 1.5 hours a shift to be permitted for student casuals, instead of the three-hour shift for all retail casuals required under Labor’s new modernised award system.

“There is a pretty compelling case for something to be done and thisis probably the least that you could do," the executive director of the retail association, Gary Black, said.

Mr Black said if the employers succeeded, it would impact businesses in all states. “There are about 200,000 retail businesses in Australia and 80 per cent of them are small businesses," Mr Black said.

“What we are talking about here is largely employment with small businesses because the major businesses are covered by [enterprise bargaining] agreements."

The minimum hours’ requirement has become a lightning rod for criticism of the new workplace relations regime.

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School students have lost casual work positions – as shop assistants and even newspaper deliverers – due to the minimum hours’ rule.

In October, the full bench of Fair Work Australia endorsed an earlier decision to reject a cut in minimum retail hours.

In its decision, the full bench criticised the employers’ arguments, saying it was “hard to imagine a weaker evidentiary case for a general reduction in the minimum period of casual engagement".

The tribunal was critical of the limited evidence presented by the employers, compared with the “significant amount of contrary evidence" presented by the retail workers’ union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA).

“The limited evidence of exclusion of student casuals from employment could quite properly be weighed against the potential disadvantage to many employees if the minimum engagement was reduced from three hours to two hours throughout Australia," the tribunal found.

The tribunal left the door open for the employers to make another application “to vary the award to deal specifically with the engagement of student casuals".

Following yesterday’s hearing at Fair Work Australia, Mr Black said there was inconsistency between the retail award and the two-hour minimum shift that existed under hospitality and restaurant awards.

He said the case had been adjourned until next year and could take some time to be resolved.

“It’s going to be possibly June next year before we get a decision so it is a very tortuous process," he said.

“It’s unfortunate because we say the clause is acting as prohibition on employment for kids, which is a pretty significant issue."

Mr Black said the employers could have modified their claims – to apply to student casuals only – earlier in the process if it had been asked by the tribunal.

“That would probably have helped accelerate it," he said.

In October, the SDA hailed the tribunal’s decision and said most casual workers wanted shifts which were a minimum of three hours.